Here’s the scoop. A team of behavioral scientists and designers at RMIT University, a public university in Melbourne, Australia, developed a new font based on the concept of “desirable difficulty“. This concept was first coined by Robert A. Bjork in 1994, basically describes tasks that require a considerable but desirable amount of effort to perform, thereby improving long-term performance. So, the theory is, according to RMIT,

Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The ‘desirable difficulty’ you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.

So why use this font? Think about it this way. If you want to remember something – an important section of an article, study notes, etc. – use the Sans Forgetica font. The font prompts your brain to “engage in deeper processing”, creating a level of desirable difficulty, thus helping you remember more.

Dr. Janneke Blijlevens and Dr. Jo Peryman from RMIT’s Behavioural Business Lab informed the design of Sans Forgetica, in collaboration with the School of Design, using principles of cognitive psychology to enhance memory retention. See more in their video below.

This isn’t a font you want to use for novels, but for short sections of an article, or the study notes you want to retain. You can check out The Guardian’s article on Sans Forgetica written in Sans Forgetica to see a good example.

Give it a try! You can download the font for free, and install the Google Chrome Extension.